London 2012 Olympics: Sir Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny face anxious wait

Sir Chris Hoy, left, and Jason Kenny will have to wait until the last possible moment before learning which man will battle for Olympic gold in the men's match sprint. Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

Sir Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny face an agonising wait to find out which man will be selected for the one Team GB place available in the match sprint at the Olympic Games.

Both men will be named on Wednesday when the Great Britain squad is formally announced in Manchester but Dave Brailsford, the performance director, and Shane Sutton, the head coach, will wait until the last possible moment before the track cycling programme begins on 2 August to make the tough choice between Hoy, the defending Olympic champion, or Kenny, the silver medallist in 2008 behind the Scot.

"We want to be open, and we want to be given the opportunity to make sure that the guy with the best form is on the start line, that the fastest guy starts," said Brailsford. "They both want that, and we want that."

Hoy said after the world championships in Melbourne in March that he would rather know sooner than later who was racing, but Brailsford feels that maintaining competition within the squad is better than guaranteeing one rider a definite slot.

"The guys are in phases of training and their response to that will become evident over a period of time," he said.

"One is going to be responding better than the other. There is an argument that if you know you are in you can focus on it, relax and get on with it and on the other hand the argument is that someone else might be better on the day."

The team announced on Wednesday is likely to be based on the track squad that brought home five gold medals in 10 Olympic track events from Melbourne. The sprinters have had training camps in Mallorca and Germany since then, while the endurance riders have been racing on the road and returned to track training on Monday. Within the track squad the one live issue remains the question of which rider will be given the third slot alongside Hoy and Kenny for the team sprint.

The German-born 19-year-old Philip Hindes enhanced his case for a place in London with a fast first lap in the team sprint, and there must be strong arguments for his inclusion ahead of the more experienced Matt Crampton and Ross Edgar, but there should be few other surprises. The mountain bike and BMX teams appear well-defined, while the road race teams, men's and women's, will be pared down in early July from initial squads announced on Wednesday.

Brailsford added that he is not surprised about recent selection appeals and controversies within the wider Great Britain team, given the particular pressures a home Games creates, and noted that he and Sutton had to face an appeal in 2008 over their BMX selection. "It shouldn't come as a surprise [that there are appeals]. I would have predicted that. This is not a normal games, it's a home games and people want to go."

Nonetheless, he is confident that within cycling, there are unlikely to be such issues, although the question of whether Lizzie Armitstead or Nicole Cooke will be appointed leader of the women's road team will excite debate until the race on 29 July. "I can't see us having too many issues but you can't rule it out. I think the best thing we ever did was go from a selection policy based on numbers – if you were national champion, if you had a certain number of ranking points – to a discretionary system."

Selection for the Great Britain squad is decided by a three-man panel consisting of Brailsford, Sutton and Doug Dailey, who headed the squad before Peter Keen and lottery funding arrived in 1997 and who has seen every Olympics since 1972. The riders' coaches have input but Brailsford believes if they were to have the final say that would impact on their relations with the riders.

"There is a policy, and there is a due process, but at the end of the day it's discretionary," said Brailsford. "If we're not good at selecting people we lose our jobs and that's the way it should be."